“located in super-natural beautiful British Columbia, the Best Place on Earth.”

Been there. It is beautiful. If it wasn’t in a socialist country I would probably like living there.

“The canopy the forest is closed and about at least 100 feet above the land.”

How true. When I was a young lad I did my military basic training at Ft. Lewis Washington. When we went hiking in the woods, the only visible sky was a thin strip above the road. When the sun went down it was so dark in there that I found my tent by falling over it.

Hey Bi, did you ever figure out who else Exxon was funding on that thread. I know it was very important to you to get to the bottom of that – to the exclusion of anything else. So who else is Exxon funding?

Canada ain’t no more “socialist” than the US. Tax Freedom Day is July 1 in BC which about the same in the US. BTW I wouldn’t call Alberta “socialist” Most of the local wear boots and drive PU trucks with gunracks!

Well, Harold continues to insist that the error for one measurement is the same as the error for many measurements. I wonder is it only on this blog that the deniers want to completely redefine statistics in order to protect their talking points, or are they doing it elsewhere? I wonder what Steve McIntyre or someone like that — i.e., someone who actually has some education in statistics — would say to Harold or Tilo? Might be fun to find out.

It is if you use the same instrument for all measurements. And you take due care to ensure the instrument is properly calibrated and maintained. All calibrated instruments will yield the same data if used properly and frequently calibrated against a secondary ref standard.

Re; #93
Harold, I agree with you about something happening in the North Pacific. The Anomaly caught my eye some time ago and it seems to be getting bigger. While the anomaly of the PDO in it’s southern horseshoe arm seems to be abateing, the northern part from Japan to Russia to Alaska has been increasing.
Just out of curiosity Harold, but do you have any affiliation with U.B.C.?

1. There is a new (2006) study, a doctoral dissertation, by Linah Ababneh of the University of Arizona that created a new bristlecone tree ring series at Sheep Mountain California. This series is important for three reasons. It reproduces much of the proxy series that was created by D. Graybill and S. Idso at the same location. And the Graybill series was heavily used by Mann and other members of the hockey team. It was Mann’s most heavily weighted series for MBH98 (390 times as heavily as the lightest weighted series), and it continued to be used by Mann, Jones, Crowley, Lowery, Osborn, Briffa, Hagerl, Rutherford, Wahl, Ammann, and the IPCC. In fact, it is this series that gives Mann’s reconstruction its particular hockey stick shape. Mann’s reconstruction does not differ significantly from the series. The Ababneh series, like the Graybill series, makes the MWP and the LIA disappear. But unlike the Graybill series, it also makes the majority of 19th and 20th century warming disappear. In those two centuries it diverges radically from the Graybill series. Linah Ababneh and the University of Arizona have not released the raw data for this study. It is important that they do.

2. The bristlecone series produced by Graybill and Idso from the Almagre Colorado site contained 41 tagged trees. But only 16 of these were ever archived. It is known that at least some of the trees that were tagged but not archived had core samples removed from them. Graybill’s study involved proving the effect of CO2 on bristlecone growth. Is it possible that Graybill cherry picked his samples to get his hockey stick results – and that subsequently Mann and others used these cherry picked series as the backbone of their temperature reconstructions? Additionally, Steve McIntyre visited the same Almagre site and took a small sample of cores (8) from the Graybill trees. These showed no 19th and 20th century trends.

3. We need an independent study of the Mann bristlecones, possibly reproducing the collection of samples at all of the sites. It is, after all, the Mann reconstructions, as well as all of the other reconstructions that are based upon Graybill data, that allow for the supposed consensus that the warming of the 20th Century is unprecedented in the last 1000 years.

4. The value of bristlecones as temperature proxies may in fact be completely worthless. These trees grow at high altitudes in very dry conditions – around 12 inches of precipitation per year. They are much more moisture limited than they are temperature limited. In fact, cooler years when the snow cover has a slow melting period, thereby supplying a steadier and longer flow of moisture to the trees, may actually be better for the trees. So it is possible, that at least part of the time, the bristlecone tree rings can be negatively correlated to temperature. Until the disparity between Ababneh, and McIntyre on the one hand, and Graybill on the other, can be resolved, the bristlecone series should be thrown out. This will take Mann’s temperature reconstruction from being just somewhat flawed to being a complete waste of effort. The temperature reconstructions that we should count on today are the one done by Moberg et al. and the one done by Loehle and McCulloch(2008). And both of these state in their abstract that there is nothing extraordinary about 20th Century climate.

The temperature reconstructions that we should count on today are the one done by Moberg et al. and the one done by Loehle and McCulloch(2008). And both of these state in their abstract that there is nothing extraordinary about 20th Century climate.

yes, and in the Loehle paper, this is FALSE information!
because after being forced to correct his paper (several of his proxies were timed 50 years too late..), his study ends at the BEGINNING of the 20th century:

Because the number of available series drops abruptly from 11 to 8 in 1935, i.e. to less than half the maximum number of series, the reconstruction was terminated in 1935.

I know that stuff and I don’t want get into analytical chemistry 101 or analytical anything 101. I’m saying that if you measure temp to +/- 1 deg F, you cannot report a mean as xy.abc +/- 0.cdf. That’s nuts!

As I said, “I like to play horse shoes. +/- 1 deg C is close and good enough.” So I’m not worrying about any error.

The climate guys really believe changes of a few 0.1 or even 0.001 deg as meaningful. I don’t and Mother Nature probably could care less.

I used one of those gadgets for years and would check its calibration by putting the probe in a Dewar filled with an ice-water slush. If I selected the 1 deg C level, it would always read “0”. If I selected the 0.1 deg C level, the display would fluctuate initially, but would become quite constant as long as you didn’t bother it.

Then one day it didn’t read “0”. So I pulled out the plug of the probe, and the blades showed some tarnish. So I cleaned these off with the rubber eraser of pencil, plugged the probe it back into the unit, and it went back to functioning normally. Until I dropped it on the concrete! It never worked quite right after that.

Harold, if you used your thermometer in you room with the 1 deg scale; and if you measured 16C on the left side of your room and 17C on the right side of your room, what temperature could you report as the closest estimate of the temperature in your room?

I worked at SFU from 1972-2002 mostly in Prof John H. Borden’s insect pheromone group. He is forest entomologist and the world’s expert on mountain pine beetles. He is also former US marine and was a real grad student butt kicker.

I watching the PDO graph also. It is really chilly up there.

Today in Burnaby it was 12 deg C at high noon in my car port. I have not seen temps this low since about the early ’70’s before the PDO went into warm cycle in ’75.

The Big Chill is for real, and the strawberry harvest down in Surrey is running about 2 weeks late. It is going to be rainy and cold until at least Sat. Brrrrr!

Don’t care Sod. The MWP and LIA were long before that, and 1935 is late enough to link his chart into the instrument data. He only needs to be able to show what the magnitude of the MWP and LIA were in his study. A comparison can then be made to 20th Century temps based upon the instrument data.

We have had an ongoing debate on this forum about the significance of 10 years of climate data. The local cultists have insisted that unless you have at least 30 years, you’ve got nothing. So I ran into this interesting paper done in 05 by Hansen, Schmidt, and others. The first part of the abstract goes like this:

“Our climate model, driven mainly by increasing human-made greenhouse
gases and aerosols, among other forcings, calculates that Earth is now absorbing 0.85 T 0.15 watts per square meter more energy from the Sun than it is emitting to space. This imbalance is confirmed by precise measurements of increasing ocean heat content over the past 10 years.”

So I guess that one of the significant features of statistics is that it can yield meaningful information for warming cultists in only 10 years. But for skeptics, 30 years of data is required. Aren’t statistics wonderful!

Don’t care Sod. The MWP and LIA were long before that, and 1935 is late enough to link his chart into the instrument data. He only needs to be able to show what the magnitude of the MWP and LIA were in his study. A comparison can then be made to 20th Century temps based upon the instrument data.

it is absolutely impossible to take a study seriously, that makes claims about tempearture at the END of the 20th century and has ZERO data beyond 1935.

splicing the instrumental temperature record on the Loehle data, has several major problems:

1. he did NOT do that. if he wants to make claims about the end of the 20th century (as he did) or the 20th century in general, he should have done it.

2. the method was MASSIVELY critized by denialists, when used on the hockeystick. it is rather funny to see, how it is acceptable for Loehle to do it. without actually doing it. (so no serious method used at all!!!)

3. but the main problem is: if you add the temperature increase since 1935 (about 0.5°C) to the end of the Loehle graph (a very simplicistic method, compared to what Mann did with the hockey stick…) you will see, that current tempearture is HIGHER than it was in the “MWP”. and the error of the MWP actually is MUCH bigger, than it is in current measurement….

“Our climate model, driven mainly by increasing human-made greenhouse gases and aerosols, among other forcings, calculates that Earth is now absorbing 0.85 T 0.15 watts per square meter more energy from the Sun than it is emitting to space. This imbalance is confirmed by precise measurements of increasing ocean heat content over the past 10 years.”

So I guess that one of the significant features of statistics is that it can yield meaningful information for warming cultists in only 10 years. But for skeptics, 30 years of data is required. Aren’t statistics wonderful!

Did it ever occur to you (he asked, already knowing the answer), that two different phenomena were being discussed, and that the time scale for one might not be the same as the time scale for the other?

Barton:
“Did it ever occur to you (he asked, already knowing the answer), that two different phenomena were being discussed, and that the time scale for one might not be the same as the time scale for the other?”

I thought climate was being discussed and that both ocean heating and surface temperature were part of that whole.

But Barton, wasn’t it you that told me that it’s all about statistics and that 10 data points are not enough to determine a trend?

Sod:
“he did NOT do that. if he wants to make claims about the end of the 20th century (as he did) or the 20th century in general, he should have done it.”

Just went back to his report, and you are right. I know that I saw a GISS temp record spliced to his chart. I can only think that someone at CA must have done it. In any case, he did do the ananlysis. Read page 17 of the report. The last paragraph will tell you why you are wrong. The paragraph extends to 18.

“the method was MASSIVELY critized by denialists, when used on the hockeystick.”

I think that such criticism would be warranted if the accuracy of the proxies was a serious issue as it is with some of Mann’s series.

“but the main problem is: if you add the temperature increase since 1935 (about 0.5°C) to the end of the Loehle graph (a very simplicistic method, compared to what Mann did with the hockey stick…) you will see, that current tempearture is HIGHER than it was in the “MWP”. and the error of the MWP actually is MUCH bigger, than it is in current measurement….”

Loehle did this, and it is explained in the paragraph that I gave you above. And it shows that you are wrong.

Also remember two more things. We are not in a horse race here, where winning only means that you have to win by a nose. We are dealing with the statement that 20 century climate is unprecedented. Mann’s chart showed that there was nothing even in the ballpark of what we have today. Loehle, Moberg and others have shown two important things that Mann tried to hide. One, there was a very significant MWP and LIA. Two, that the warming difference between the MWP and today is insignificant.

I think that we need a version of environmental ‘myth buster’s’ to counter all of the myths being spun by the aforementioned TR on his own personal thread.

For starters: “What is clear, both from the temperature reconstructions and from independent evidence – such as the extent of the recent melting of mountain glaciers – is that the planet has been warmer in the past few decades than at any time during the medieval period. In fact, the world may not have been so warm for 6000 or even 125,000 years.”

What strikes me is how much the die-hard denialists need to keep spreading every myth – e.g. clutch at every short straw – they can. Sadly, as I said in another thread, these people continue to fiddle while Rome continues to burn.

Unfortunately Jeff, the only thing that is clear is that you do not know how to read your data and you are unaware of the history behind your chart. So let me give you some of the problems.

1. Look at the chart. Go to the place where the reconstructions end. Do you notice anything unusual? Here is a hint. None of the proxy reconstructions agree with instrumentation record. Out of 11 proxies, only Crowley’s makes it past 0. The instrumentation record shows an anomoly of .69. Ten out of 11 of your proxies never get past zero. Look at where the instrumentation record starts to race up. The proxies that go past that point in time do not race up with the instrumentation record. A few of the proxy reconstructions have had their data seperately updated, and they also did not show anything remotely close to temp rise of the instrumentation record. Most of these proxies are tree ring proxies. You can go to the exact same trees, take a core, and get them updated to the last year. Some of that has been done, and the proxies do not show the same warming as the instrument record. So one of two things is wrong. Either the instrument records are way overcooked to show warming, or the proxies are incapable of reflecting warming that actually exists. If the proxies do not show warming that exists, then they will certainly not show the extend of MWP warming.

Problem 2 is that the majority of the people on the graph are a part of Mann’s hockey team. They are either former Mann students or people that have previously collaborated with Mann. They use the same methods, and they use many of the same data series as Mann does. Most of them, for example, use the Graybill Idso tree ring series. This is a series that has been shown by Linah Ababneh to contain virtually no temperature data.

Problem 3 – one of the few independent reconstructions in the group is that of Anders Moberg. Let’s see what he says in his abstract for his paper:

“According to our reconstruction, high temperatures – similar to those observed in the twentieth century before 1990- occurred around AD 1000 to 1100, and minimum temperatures that are about 0.7K below the average of 1961-90 occurred around AD 1600. This large natural variability in the past suggests an important role of natural multicentennial variability that is likely to continue. ”

Problem 4 – Craig Loehle used 18 different proxy reconstructions from around the world, none of them tree ring, to also show that the MWP was as warm, if not warmer, than the present.

Problem 5 – Going back just a little further, we know that the Holocene Optimum was wamer than today and stayed that way for over a century. Most likely the Arctic ice all melted during the Holocene Optimum, and the cute little polar bears survived just fine.

Read page 17 of the report. The last paragraph will tell you why you are wrong. The paragraph extends to 18.

Loehle is playing a cheap trick here. he can claim the two to be similar, by applying a 29 year smooth to modern temperature.
of course he doesnt arrive at the end of the 20th century that way, but can only go up to 1992. even the “reworked” paper is NOT the 2000 year reconstruction that he promises in the title.

(funny, he left the misleading abstract on that page, but changed the download…)

I think that such criticism would be warranted if the accuracy of the proxies was a serious issue as it is with some of Mann’s series.

no. the critisism was with the method of splicing modern data to proxy one. exactly what loehle does. only that Mann used some real method…

Also remember two more things. We are not in a horse race here, where winning only means that you have to win by a nose. We are dealing with the statement that 20 century climate is unprecedented.

20th century temperature IS unprecedented in the last 2000 years, even when using the Loehle data! the only way that Loehle can make them look similar, is by NOT looking at the real temperature development, but only at a 29 year smooth.
and he is comparing extremely accurate data with extremely unrelyable one!

“According to our reconstruction, high temperatures – similar to those observed in the twentieth century before 1990- occurred around AD 1000 to 1100,

this is the major problem, that i ve bee pointing out for quite a while now: Loehle places the MWP between 800 and 1000. Moberg has it between 1000 and 1100.

“So I guess that one of the significant features of statistics is that it can yield meaningful information for warming cultists in only 10 years. But for skeptics, 30 years of data is required. Aren’t statistics wonderful!”

Can’t speak for every place on earth, but every place where I’ve lived, the temperature range has been about a hundred degrees F. I’m pretty sure the range of temps for the ocean is a bit less. This requires less smoothing, you see.

Eh, no I don’t. The kind of variation that you are talking about is well smoothed by the 365 samples (minimum) that you get in a year.

Then we have the other question. If ten years is meaningful in the oceans, then is the four years of no warming that we have had for the oceans also meaningful. Or is this another case where only the time interval that has been cherry picked by the warmers is meaningful?

But Barton, wasn’t it you that told me that it’s all about statistics and that 10 data points are not enough to determine a trend?

No, it usually is not. What makes you think the paper under discussion used only ten data points?

Again — please try to understand this — things happen at different time scales. If you’re plotting the growth of a baby, one year is a long time, and you can take readings one or two weeks apart and get statistical significance. If you’re plotting the growth of world temperature, 30 years is a long time. You can’t take out ten years and say it’s significant, because the time scale is wrong. It would be like taking four months (near the end of the period) out of the baby’s life and saying it’s significant. And if you’re quoting the growth of, say, body mass in fossil horses, ten million years is a long time, and three million years might be too short.

They were interviewing a farmer on MSNBC today, and he told them that the cool wet weather is going to cause corn shortages this year. Corn has already gone up 74% this year. Harvests will be late and small. While the warming cult is constantly trumpeting the dangers of warming, they seem to be blind to the dangers of cooling.

I guess that Tim thinks it’s the “Denial Industrial Complex” and it’s “War on Science” that is giving us the cooling, the 11 year flat temperature trend, and the poor corn crops. Apparently the flattening of the trend line beginning in 98 corresponds to the beginning of the evil denialist plot designed to prevent the socialists from building their perfect society.

Not quite a conspiracy, but most of those people were student and previous co-authors of Mann. Most of them used the same series and the same methods as Mann. Most of them use the same Graybill and Idso data that has no temperature information.

Barton:
“No, it usually is not. What makes you think the paper under discussion used only ten data points?”

Because it only covers ten years. But if you are saying that we can use a higher sampling rate, like monthy data, then we can do that with global temp data as well. Of course you told me before that that wouldn’t work. Are you actually going to stand behind something or are you just going to slither around according to the situation?

“things happen at different time scales.”

Yeap, but in this case we are still talking about climate. Now you are moving off the “It’s all about statistics” position and going to a “you have to understand the thing you are dealing with” position. It’s the same thing that I have been telling you all along. The 30 year number is based upon certain assumptions – not just statistics. And it is those assumptions that I’m questioning. So shut up about statistics telling you that you need 30 years for something to be significant. It’s not statistic. It’s the nature of the thing that you are studying that is important in determining the time period. And there is no reason to believe that 30 years is in any way the magic number for climate.

“on a related sidenote, arctic sea ice level is still below last year!”

You are leading the race in the Arctic, Sod; but remember we have another 4 months. It looks good for you. The ENSO chart shows a lot of warm water in the North Atlantic. The North Pacific doesn’t look as warm, however.

Ian:
“Your comments just show that you know absolutely nothing about what you are talking about.”

“At Nipaatsoq, blowing glacial sands covered the farm in the early 1400’s, sealing it until 1990, when two hunters reported seeing ancient wood protruding from an eroded stream bank.”

“At the Viking site near here, artifacts were locked in permafrost and buried under several feet of sand.”

“What does seem to have contributed to the abandonment of the Western Settlements, archaeologists said, is climate change. The onset of a ”little ice age” made living halfway up Greenland’s coast untenable in the mid-1300’s, argues Dr. Charles Schweger, an archaeology professor at the University of Alberta,”

“blowing glacial sands covered the farm in the early 1400’s, sealing it until 1990, when two hunters reported seeing ancient wood protruding from an eroded stream bank.”

Tilo Reber –
How in the name of holy hell do you get from that phrase to “real Viking settlements uncovered by retreating glaciers”

An eroding stream bank is not a retreating glacier. The farm was not covered by a glacier. Permafrost is not a glacier.

Many of the viking farm sites are actively farmed today. They are starting to be able to grow crops never grown before in Greenland. Grass farmers are reporting that they are able to get 2 hay crops a year, where that was not possible before. And there is NO evidence,none,nada, zip of farms being uncovered by retreating glaciers – that is a pernicious and utterly false lie often promulgated by denialist sites. That you repeat it says a lot about where you get your ‘information’ and the filters you apply to it – and what it says isnt good.

I’m afraid that you are taking “uncovered by retreating glaciers” too literally. First read this from the article.

“Dr. Schweger said the Norse were no match for cooling temperatures, which caused a glacier several miles up a valley to expand. As this glacier grew, it also released more water every summer into the valley, causing turbidity in drinking water and raging floods that blanketed meadows with sand and gravel. Today the edge of Greenland’s ice cap is only six miles from the old farm site. But in the mid-14th century, it probably was far closer.”

Obviously it was the sand and gravel from the advancing glacier that buried the farm. And the water from that glacier that turned the farm into permafrost. It was the more recent retreat of that glacier that allowed things to dry up. And it was the warming that allowed the permafrost to melt and the glacier sand to blow away.

But this is all silly bickering of the kind that the cultist love. The point is that there was active farming going on half way up Greenland’s western coast. I am unable to find any information of any farming going on there now. There is a small amount of farming going on in southern Greenland. But the fact that an active farm halfway up the Greenland coast went from being able to sustain Vikings to turning into a popsicle should tell you that the area underwent far more of a climate change than the trivial .2C that Mann claims.

Lee:
“Grass farmers are reporting that they are able to get 2 hay crops a year, where that was not possible before.”

Can I have a link for that? And do you have any evidence that they are able to farm anywhere other than southern Greenland.

“That you repeat it says a lot about where you get your ‘information'”

Don’t be a moron! I gave you the link where I got the information. Call the NY Times and tell them they are lying.

Sod:
“Loehle is playing a cheap trick here. he can claim the two to be similar, by applying a 29 year smooth to modern temperature. ”

Seems very fair to me. He applies the same smoothing to his own data, thereby removing higher highs and lower lows from it as well.

“no. the critisism was with the method of splicing modern data to proxy one. exactly what loehle does. only that Mann used some real method…”

If Mann used “some real method”, the why do his modern proxies not show near the temp rise of the modern instrument records. Give it up Sod. We now know that those tree ring series, when updated, do not reflect the scope of modern warming. So what makes you think that they can reflect past warming?

“the only way that Loehle can make them look similar, is by NOT looking at the real temperature development, but only at a 29 year smooth.”

Again you people are trying to eat your cake and have it too. You are the ones that keep claiming that it takes 30 years to make a trend. So why not use a 29 year smoothing for long periods. Loehle’s data gets the same trimming as the instrument data.

“this is the major problem, that i ve bee pointing out for quite a while now: Loehle places the MWP between 800 and 1000. Moberg has it between 1000 and 1100.”

Don’t know the answer to that one Sod. Except that tree ring data does have the advantage of accurate time stamping. Loehle excluded all tree ring data, and the price may be very poor time resolution. Of course the problem with tree ring data is that the growth limiting factor for many tree types in many areas is not temperature. Haken Grudd’s Scandinavian tree ring series had the MWP cover a 200 year period for about 900 to about 1100. And of course he also had the MWP as being warmer than today.

If Mann used “some real method”, the why do his modern proxies not show near the temp rise of the modern instrument records. Give it up Sod. We now know that those tree ring series, when updated, do not reflect the scope of modern warming. So what makes you think that they can reflect past warming?

again:
i am talking about the splicing. mann was attacked for doing it. he was calibrating the splice by a period of overlap. Loehle just adds the splice to the last datapoint. obviously at best a simplicistic method.
Mann gets attacked, Loehle praised. you don t have the impression that this is because you guys like his result?

Again you people are trying to eat your cake and have it too. You are the ones that keep claiming that it takes 30 years to make a trend. So why not use a 29 year smoothing for long periods. Loehle’s data gets the same trimming as the instrument data.

yes. the obvious difference is, that the HIGH FREQUENCY proxies NEED this smooth!

it doesn t make the slightest sense to use a 29 years smooth on 70 years of data. it is cutting of the end, while Loehle still claims, he is doing a 2000 years analysis.it s an artificial result.

Don’t know the answer to that one Sod. Except that tree ring data does have the advantage of accurate time stamping. Loehle excluded all tree ring data, and the price may be very poor time resolution. Of course the problem with tree ring data is that the growth limiting factor for many tree types in many areas is not temperature. Haken Grudd’s Scandinavian tree ring series had the MWP cover a 200 year period for about 900 to about 1100. And of course he also had the MWP as being warmer than today.

Tilo, you still haven t figured out the difference between local and global data. and if you assume the data has a 100 years x-axis error, you can as well throw it away!

and just by chance, you picked a treering proxy, that happens to diverge.

why not chose one of the Büntgen Alps series?

it is rather interesting to watch the denialist community triumph by pointing out the diverceny, while REAL SCIENTISTS are working to figure out the problem.

an obvious first step is to focus on treering proxies that don t show the problem!

the existence of a mwp and/or a little ice age rests on there being synchronous temperature change; it’s not clear that there was synchronous temperature change around the north Atlantic, let alone global. just dumping all the dates into “the middle ages” which appear quite compact from this distant perspective doesn’t do the job. if Scandinavia were warming when Greenland was cooling and/or vice versa, not to mention the Norse settlements in America, that’s not global warming, that’s just that good old north Atlantic oscillation, isn’t it?

Sod:
“Loehle just adds the splice to the last datapoint. obviously at best a simplicistic method.”

But not necessarily any less accurate.

“yes. the obvious difference is, that the HIGH FREQUENCY proxies NEED this smooth!”

I don’t follow your argument. Even using a lower frequency proxy, you could be getting outliers.

“can you spot the difference to modern instrument data?”

With that many proxies on one page it’s difficult to get your point. But smoothing seems to be called for. And by your own claims of anything less that 30 years being weather, modern instrument data would need smooting as well.

“Tilo, you still haven t figured out the difference between local and global data. ”

Of course I have. What you haven’t figured out is that if you get enough local data from enough places around the globe, then you have global data. You know Mann’s “global” reconstruction has very very little from the southern hemisphere. When Imhofe asked Mann about this, Mann claimed that it didn’t matter because the temperature effects would not stay local for more than a couple of decades.

“and if you assume the data has a 100 years x-axis error, you can as well throw it away!”

Looking at a compilation of tree ring reconstructions I can see 20 to 30 years of non-correlation at times. And tree rings should be almost 100 percent accurate on dating.

“and just by chance, you picked a treering proxy, that happens to diverge.”

I like to think of it as a proxy that doesn’t belong to the hockey team. And mainly I mentioned it for dating purposes. My own opinion is that trees are probably better rain gauges than they are thermometers. Especially trees from dry areas.

“while REAL SCIENTISTS are working to figure out the problem.”

I would say that your supposed “REAL SCIENTISTS” are working very hard to create a problem that doesn’t exist just to keep their funding flowing. I saw an estimate today of the cost of stopping CO2 growth by 2050. I was on the order of 41 Trillion dollars.

“an obvious first step is to focus on treering proxies that don t show the problem!”

Ouch. It looks like you zapped yourself with that one Sod. First, the paper clearly admits the problem that I have been pointing out – namely all of these tree ring series that flatten out past climate, but that also don’t show modern warming. Then they go on to say, “Hey we can cherry pick some trees that show the local warming trend and that also “almost” follow the magnitude of the rise in the local instrument record.” That only leaves you with four problems.

1. How much of the rise is due to CO2 feeding. Remeber this is what Graybill was actually trying to prove when he collected Mann’s favorite series.

2. These trees are obviously cherry picked, because the authors are admitting to the problem that they were trying to solve in their abstract.

3. Even using cherry picked trees they couldn’t get all of the temp rise – indicating that the instrument record is probably overcooked.

4. Their data only goes back to 1750. So we cannot tell if these same trees wouldn’t also show a very warm MWP. Using one set of trees to affirm 20th century warming and a completely different set to deny MWP warming seems to me to be the most egregious kind of goal oriented science that I can think of.

Ian:
“Tilo, if it gets colder and glaciers expand then there is less water flowing out of them.”

Ian, could you just stop running off at the mouth for a moment and actually try to read and comprehend the article. And don’t tell me about the NY Times. This information comes from the scientists that are studying the site. Take special note of the following.

“As this glacier grew, it also released more water every summer into the valley, causing turbidity in drinking water and raging floods that blanketed meadows with sand and gravel.”

“You don’t understand the difference between a mean and a smoothing, do you?”

I understand it very well Barton. But the same principle applies. If you cannot have a meaningful trend line with less than 30 years of data because of the natural variation, then it also makes sense to use a 30 smoothing period in order to smooth out that same natural variation. You keep talking about definitions and statistics Barton, but you seem to have the common sense and real understanding of a pet rock.

Sod:
“why don t you point out a scientific article that made that claim?”

Actually, it was Lee that made the claim. Betula simply assumed that Lee was telling the truth. I asked Lee to provide the source of the claim, and so far he hasn’t done so. I suspect that the claim comes from the Climate Audit discussion on the Greenland farms. In that thread someone mentioned that Canada was now able to harvest two grass crops a year. I suspect that the transition to Greenland occured at some point in Lee’s feeble mind.

z:
“if Scandinavia were warming when Greenland was cooling and/or vice versa, not to mention the Norse settlements in America, that’s not global warming, that’s just that good old north Atlantic oscillation, isn’t it? ”

If you take one place that is warming and another that is cooling at the same time and you put them together in a combined chart, you will have a chart that is flattened.

Loehle’s chart combines 18 proxies from around the world, and it is not flat. It still has an MWP that is warmer than today.

Looks like Boxer’s climate tax bill has fallen flat on it’s face. Bad news for the warmers. The longer it takes to get the suffocating legislation that the warmers are demanding, the longer the world will have to see that it is all a hoax. That, of course, is why they are in such a hurry.

“The point is that there was active farming going on half way up Greenland’s western coast. I am unable to find any information of any farming going on there now. There is a small amount of farming going on in southern Greenland.”

That “half way up Greenland’s western coast’ was at the western settlement, substantially less than half way up the coast. That collection of farms was very near Nuuk. This is what the CSM has to say about modern farming at Nuuk:

In the capital, Nuuk, 200 miles north, potato farming is a new thing. Price disputes between local farmers and retailers have even been front-page news. “If somebody had proposed potatoes for the front page 15 years ago, everyone would have thought it was a hilarious joke,” says Nuuk native Minik Rosing, one of Greenland’s most renowned scientists. “There’s a whole new world opening up.”

Excerpt, with lots more about modern Greenland farming in the article:
“Some farmers are trying new types of produce, such as broccoli,
cauliflower and Chinese cabbage. Most are getting more from their old
crops. “Usually we only have one cut of hay,” says Kenneth Hoegh, a
farming consultant for Greenland’s Department of Agriculture. “But
because it is getting warmer — it is definitely getting warmer —
more and more farmers are getting two cuts of hay.”

Those higher yields are rippling through the agriculture chain. Over
the past five years, a doubled hay crop has helped sheep farmer Erik
Rode Frederiksen. ”

Tilo might spend less time making confident and absurdly uninformed statements, and more time informing himself.

I would say that your supposed “REAL SCIENTISTS” are working very hard to create a problem that doesn’t exist just to keep their funding flowing.

Yes, that’s definitely the kind of thing you would say.

I saw an estimate today of the cost of stopping CO2 growth by 2050. I was on the order of 41 Trillion dollars.

Find the gross world product and find how much of it is spent on energy infrastructure every year. Then assume a 3% real growth rate and project from 2008 to 2050. The 42 (not 41) trillion dollars isn’t coming out of nowhere and is not new government spending. The report simply said that the investment had to be in renewable (and nuclear) energy sources and not in fossil fuels.

“You don’t understand the difference between a mean and a smoothing, do you?”

I understand it very well Barton.

And then immediately follows that up with:

But the same principle applies. If you cannot have a meaningful trend line with less than 30 years of data because of the natural variation, then it also makes sense to use a 30 smoothing period in order to smooth out that same natural variation.

From Tilo:
“I would say that your supposed “REAL SCIENTISTS” are working very hard to create a problem that doesn’t exist just to keep their funding flowing.”

Alex, I’ll take “What type of crankery does Tilo Reber believe?” for $500.
Tilo, it seems odd to me that all the national academies identify GW as a major concern, when they didn’t do the same for other funding issues, such as complementary medicine, cold fusion, UFO’s, ESP, and other great funding opportunities. Seeing as science budgets are constrained, and a dollar for climate research will come out of the same pot that funds me and others, I’d say that it must be a sincere concern.

If you cannot have a meaningful trend line with less than 30 years of data because of the natural variation, then it also makes sense to use a 30 smoothing period in order to smooth out that same natural variation.

a 30 years smooth on 30 years of data makes no sense at all.

i am sorry, but it is very obvious that you don t have the slightest understanding of this subject!

Actually it’s 45 trillion. And it looks like that sum is above and beyond what we are spending on the energy infrastructure currently. That sum is 3 times the entire US economy. Once we begin implementing carbon taxation and regulation, the 3% growth rate will probably not happen. More likely, growth will go negative. Costs are also likely to go up, and like every government directed project, the 45 trillion will probably turn into 90 trillion. Of course if it hadn’t been for the green nutcases much more of the world would already be on nuclear energy.

“No, Tilo, I did not claim that AGW has no benefits. Betula made that claim”

Lee, I was simply stating that I didn’t think there were any benefits, at least none that are supposed to be discussed. I learned that on this blog.

For example, in a previous post, I asked this question..

“Betula asks: “Second, what will be the benefits, if any,of future warming?”.

This was my response from Jeff Harvey…

“Go on Betula keep on asking inane questions like this. You might as well ask what the benefits are of clear cutting the world’s remaining wet tropical forests, or of draining most of America’s remaining wetlands. Theyb all fall into much of the same category.”

JH then continued….

“To argue, as you appear to be, that AGW has benefits in light of the fact that its a part of a huge, global experiment with potentially disastrous consequences for nature and for man is the sprint of folly”

So Lee, for you to point out that some grass farmers have benefited from AGW, I can’t help but think of you as a Denialist Twit.

My god you people are ignorant. I never said anything about smoothing 30 years of data. Where the hell do you get that? I said that it makes sense to use 30 year smoothing when longer periods were involved. Look at #155.

“i am sorry, but it is very obvious that you don t have the slightest understanding of this subject!”

I’m sorry, but it is very obvious that you don’t have the slightest understanding of what you read!”

Betula, you are (intentionally?) confusing arguments about net effect, with examples of individual cost and benefit.

Go read those articles about Greenland farming, and you see some of the farmers talking about the global cost of losing all that ice into the world ocean.
They are local beneficiaries of a change with global negative effect. This is simple – even for you.

“it seems odd to me that all the national academies identify GW as a major concern,”

Most of the members of these national academies do not study climate science. They simply take the word of what they believe to be the majority of climate scientists. And the climate scientists have followed in the footsteps of such nut cases as James Hansen and Michael Mann without making any serious attempts to find the flaws in their work. The governments love the idea of having another excuse for increasing taxes and diminishing freedom, and they will throw billions at the climate scietists that will give them the information they need to make it happen.

The culture of greenie wannbe’s have found their new god and their new cause. They can now strut around telling people how they should live, feeding their own egos, feeling that their empty lives are now meaningful and elevating their self importance in their own eyes. The socialists can use AGW as a tool for increasing the socialization of governments and societies. There is a lot of payoff for a lot of people in propogating the AGW hoax.

“They are local beneficiaries of a change with global negative effect. This is simple – even for you.”

If you read his explanation it should have been obvious to you that he was debating agaist the argument that there are no positive effects to AGW. He was not debating the global effects. But outside of your mistaken impression of what he was talking about, I don’t think that we have a very clear picture at this time of the actual global effects. Most of the work in that area has been done using draconian scenarios that will probably never happen, and very little was done to count up the positive side of the equation.

“he was debating against the argument that there are no positive effects to AGW.”
Right. Which was a straw man, which we pointed out. And he then confused local with global arguments in deflecting from this point, and this was pointed out. Now you repeat the straw man we originally pointed out.

My god you people are ignorant. I never said anything about smoothing 30 years of data. Where the hell do you get that? I said that it makes sense to use 30 year smoothing when longer periods were involved. Look at #155.

you made an “IF…THEN…” clause. i gave you a counterexample. case closed.

With regard to the sensibility of using a 30 year smoothing period. Not with regard to using a 30 year smoothing period on 30 years of data.

Check out cryosphere today Sod. Looks like it’s close to a dead heat and we are at the point where the Arctic sea ice area anomoly increased by one million square kilometers in three weeks last year. Will we follow it this year?

Hansen’s GISS garbage is delivered. It’s at .36 – down .05. This means that the divergence with the satellites will get even larger. What is interesting is the March number. In April it came out as .67. In May it was revised to .60. Now it has been revised to .58. When the number in April came out it was being trumpeted as the second warmest March on record. After getting the publicity, Hansen began to drop the number. March was another one of those beautiful examples of alarmists hypocrisy where they use weather as though it were climate, while at the same time reminding AGW skeptics about not doing the same themselves.

Tilo, do you bother to read even the articles you link? Tilo says:
“Looks like we have another error in the instrument record. And it means that we will probably have to readjust the warming trend – down – again.”

But the abstract of that article concludes:
“Corrections for the discontinuity are expected to alter the character of mid-twentieth century temperature variability but not estimates of the century-long trend in global-mean temperatures.”

The discontinuity is an 0.3C DROP in temps at 1945. Removing the discontinuity means either adjusting post 1945 temps UP by 0.3C, or pre-1945 temps DOWN by 0.3C. Either adjustment means that there is an 0.3C POSITIVE adjustment in temp trend at 1945.

Note the orange 50 year trend line. If the correction in the paper I linked is done, the start of that 50 year trend line will be raised. Raising the beginning of that trend line will decrease the trend. Depending on the stopping point for the adjustment, there may be a small amount of upward correction for the 25 year trend. But of course 25 years is weather according to Barton, so I have no idea why the IPCC even bothered to include such a short trend line. In any case, the bottom line is this – since the IPCC used the near term trends in determining future trends, then those trends will be reduced if the temperature of their starting point is raised. And that appears to be the case with this correction.

Now, notice at the bottom of the page how the IPCC attributed the cooling for the period in question to industrial pollution. But if the cooling for the period is removed, then the IPCC attribution turns into just so much bullshit. In other words, the IPCC made it up because they though it fit the data – not because they had any real evidence of the cause. This is another indication of the slopiness and guesswork involved in the report.

The results give little support to the optimists. Globally, the overall impact of baseline global warming by the 2080s is a reduction in agricultural productivity (output per hectare) of 16 percent without carbon fertilization, and a reduction of 3 percent should carbon fertilization benefits actually materialize–when results are weighted by output (see Table 1, bottom panel). The losses are greater when weighted by population or country.

The sharp concentration of losses is in the developing countries. Whereas the industrial countries experience outcomes ranging from 6 percent losses without carbon fertilization to 8 percent gains with it, developing country regions suffer losses of about 25 percent without carbon fertilization and 10-15 percent if carbon fertilization is included. For developing countries, the median loss would be 15-26 percent, and the output-weighted average loss, 9-21 percent. Losses could reach devastating levels in some of the poorest countries (greater than 50 percent in Senegal and Sudan).”http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2008/03/cline.htm